


The Path

by etal



Series: Fairy Tales / Folk Tales [2]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, M/M, Rimming, anal sex but it's all a bit hazy sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 18:20:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14502789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etal/pseuds/etal
Summary: A Red Riding Hood story for the fairy tales series.





	The Path

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to dedicate this one to fanmouse because she reminded me in a comment on the last batch of fairy tales just to write what you like and not fuss on. I didn't mean to write another one of these but the red hoodie did me in.

The path through the woods began just outside the orderly little village but the villagers never used it. They buzzed around the well-tended fruit trees in the orchard which edged the forest and gathered fallen branches from just inside the treeline where they could still keep one foot safely on village ground. Children were taught never to go into the woods alone, and if they found themselves there by error or trick, warned to _stay on the path_ and never to fall into conversation with anyone they met there.

Timothée pulled his red hood over his head and stepped onto the path, the sound of the village’s morning activity gradually fading behind him. The trees ahead sighed and swayed as he passed under them. The woods were beautiful on a fine day like this. Wildflowers grew along the side of the path, speedwell and bluebells, still wet with dew, scattered like tiny sapphires through the grass; white wood anemones and yellow kingcups formed gold and silver borders along the banks of the little stream which sang its bubbling song to the quiet trees. Timothée sang to himself too, after his fashion, repeating the words of his favourite rhymes as he drifted along, swinging his basket. Butterflies chased across the path, darting in and out of the sunny spots. One, a cheerful fellow with bright yellow wings spotted with pretty blue markings, alighted on his hand and he lifted his fingers carefully to look at it closely, fancying maybe he could try to kiss it and feel its soft flutter on his lips. There were birds, too, to keep him company through the bright morning, a kingfisher flashing azure across the stream, woodpeckers sounding out their labour above his head in the canopy and the blackbirds and thrushes competing with Timothée and the stream to make the music of the woods.

After a while Timothée met a man coming towards him on the path. When their eyes met he stopped and smiled, taking in Timothée as he stood there on the path, with his basket and red hood, his dark curls framing his pale face. The man was tall and broad and very handsome, with golden hair and wide blue eyes, and when he smiled his teeth showed sharp and white.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hello,” replied Timothée.

The man nodded at Timothée’s basket. “What’s in there then?”

Timothée tilted his head as if he was confused by the question, then lifted the checked cloth that covered the basket.

“A cake. And a little pot of butter.”

“Weird picnic.”

“It’s not a picnic.”

“So if you’re not going on a picnic, why are you in the woods all on your own? You know there are wild beasts roaming around here?” He looked Timothée up and down. “You would look very tender and tempting to them. Aren’t you scared?”

“No. Aren’t you?”

“Never. I come and go as I please. And if I choose to make my way through the trees, I will.” He said these last words loudly, as if he was continuing an argument with someone unseen. “But they shouldn’t have let you wander into the woods all alone like this. You should be by a fire, wrapped in a blanket, drinking fresh milk and eating new bread.”

“I prefer to be outside,” said Timothée. “You never know what you’ll find in the woods.”

“That’s true. Today you’ve found me, for example. I'm Armie.” He made a graceful bow. “May I walk along with you for a while?”

“But aren’t you going the other way?”

“I think I’ve decided on a diversion.” 

Timothée tilted his head to one side again, looking at Armie from under his eyelashes, and said, “What do they say about being wary of strangers one meets in the woods?”

“They only say that because they know how interesting strangers can be. Especially,” he added, turning, and taking Timothée’s arm so they could continue along the path together, “strangers with beautiful faces who look as though they might know good stories. Now, tell me, where _are_ you going all alone through the woods?”

“I have errands to run. Something to deliver and something to collect. What brings you here?”

“The avoidance of errands, chiefly. I like to be free.”

They walked on together. The path was not straight; it wound and turned, through clearings and mossy dells where high rocks made little valleys and darker corners. As the day waned, their steps took them further into the depths of the woods, where the sun-seeking flowers gave way to plants which preferred dimmer light: foxglove, green-spice and enchanter’s nightshade. Vines climbed the trees, which were older and taller than those which stood watching the village. The cacophony of birdsong diminished until there was only one insistent nightingale calling its invitation from the branches above. 

Timothée paused to pick wild strawberries. He offered one to Armie who bent his head and ate the fruit directly from Timothée’s fingers. He marvelled at the taste of aniseed sweetness and said, “Isn’t it early for strawberries?”

“Not in this part of the wood. You just need to look carefully.”

As they walked, they told each other stories of travellers who got lost in the woods and were never seen again, Timothée’s basket bumping between them, Armie’s large hand curled around Timothée’s elbow keeping them close.

“What big hands you have,” said Timothée, after a while. “You should put them on me.”

Armie pressed him against a tree and his big hands found their way under Timothée’s clothes and onto his skin, making him gasp and shiver.

Armie smiled, showing all his white teeth. Timothée touched his mouth. “Your teeth are...” And he tilted his neck in invitation.

Armie bent his head and touched his teeth to Timothée’s neck, canines digging in a little, but Timothée didn’t flinch. He sighed, and stretched a little further, allowing Armie more purchase, letting him mouth his way from collarbone to the lobe of his ear, sucking and pulling and drawing out sensation with the trail of his tongue.

“And what else do you notice?” Armie said into Timothée’s ear.

“Well, you’re just… generally… big.”

“True,” growled Armie, picking Timothée up in such a way as to crowd him against the tree with his legs wrapped around Armie’s waist. 

Their lips met and they kissed, softly at first and then with an increasing wildness, grinding their bodies together to their mutual pleasure. Armie broke off, panting, and said, “I would like to have you. There is no-one here to stop me, but I would like your consent. I would like it if you asked me to take off your clothes and lay you on the grass and if you opened yourself up to me.”

“Yes please,” Timothée said and his eyes were dark and deep. “But not here, not on the path.”

Armie looked to left and right down the path and he smiled his assent.

“There,” said Timothée, “that way.” He pointed and Armie noticed that there was a small trail leading from the ground where he stood, away from the path and into the woods.

“You’re not afraid to leave the path?” he said to Timothée, kissing his mouth again, his eyelids, his hair.

“Not if I’m with you.”

Timothée slid back down to his feet, and Armie took his hand, leading him as they stepped into the trees, following the narrow trail 

They reached a clearing, where the trees clustered in a ring and the ground was soft with moss. The forest stream ran through the clearing and the sun reached down to touch its surface, and the butterflies and birds were once again in abundance.

Armie took Timothée’s basket from his hands and set it on the grass. Then he pushed back his red hood over his shoulders and threw it to one side. He tugged the boy’s shirt up over his head and then knelt to unbutton him. On his knees, he smiled up at Timothée, and closing his eyes, bent to suck him into his mouth, Timothée’s hands were in his hair, then fluttering down to his shoulders then back to his hair again, pulling a little and stroking and his breath was coming in gasps, half-words forming and unforming and spilling into the quiet of their clearing. Armie kept his mouth on him until his own need became too urgent and he tipped him gently backwards onto the ground, reaching over to pull the red hoodie under Timothée’s body to protect his soft skin. The sight of him lying there, the dappled light of the forest playing over his delicate body and his dark hair against the crimson, was more than a man could stand and he launched himself down upon him with a barely contained ferocity. The taste of Timothée was in his mouth and he chased more of it up and down his body, as if he would eat him alive; he turned him and fastened his teeth at the back of his neck, licked and bit down his spine and spread him to lick into the core of his body, until Timothée was wild and frantic, moving almost as if to get away then pushing himself backwards, asking for more and receiving it, deeper and harder, from Armie’s mouth and his fingers. 

“Stop.. stop.. “ he gasped out eventually, turning himself back in Armie’s arms and looking dazedly up at him. “Now, please, all of you…”

Armie looked down at Timothée’s body, where he was wet and open, but he hesitated, “You are so small. I’m afraid I will hurt you.”

“Well,” Timothée considered, “there is my little pot of butter.”

As Armie sank inside Timothée's body and Timothée lifted his hips to meet his strokes, the wind gathered in the treetops and the sun dimmed. An observer might have seen the shade beneath the trees move and gather around them but they were all oblivious, Armie pausing only to drag a hand down Timothée's body to help him to his pleasure, Timothée laying back with his arms outstretched above his head, abandoned and ecstatic.

Afterwards, they ate the cake. Armie complained of his sticky hands and face and Timothée said, “wash in the stream, there.” Armie washed his face and hands and drank straight from the stream while Timothée lay stretched out, watching him. He came back, clean, to lie beside Timothée and kiss him and stroke his face. He touched his finger to the centre of Timothée’s brows.

“Your eyebrows meet in the middle.”

Timothée smiled. “That's a useful thing to notice.”

“And now,” Armie said, “I will escort you out of the woods. Night is coming and you should be somewhere safe.”

Timothée got to his feet but didn't move to dress himself.

“We just need to find our way back to the path and then…” Armie turned this way and that but he couldn’t see the trail which had led them into the clearing. “Where is the … which direction did we…”

“There isn’t a way back to the path now.” 

Armie gazed at Timothée and time seemed to stutter. Moonlight flooded the clearing and Timothée suddenly looked quite different. His soft eyes were bright and his smile was wolfish.

“But… I have to go home.”

“You can’t go home anymore Armie. You ate fruit from the woods, didn’t you, and washed in the stream, and you lay down with me away from the path, and now you belong to me. Don’t be sad. That old world was only a dream anyway, wasn’t it?”

The forest was in full night now. Owls hooted in the branches above their heads and the whole wood lived in a different way and in a different time. Shadows moved through the trees and from close by came the howling of wolves. 

“Don’t be afraid,” said Timothée. And if the hand he extended was clawed and if Armie felt his own skin and sinew stretching to accommodate a new kind of life, then it was only the path he had chosen.

**Author's Note:**

> the butter thing's gross but that's what RRH has in her basket and I couldn't shake it. It's not a Last Tango in Paris reference.
> 
> 'Never stray from the path, never eat a windfall apple and never trust a man whose eyebrows meet in the middle.'  
> Granny in _The Company of Wolves_.
> 
> etal-later on tumblr


End file.
